While WWII was being fought by men overseas, much of their successes can be traced back to the women working in their absence on the home front. Every military branch would hire women in various jobs throughout the war. Before WWII, the expectation of a women was to leave work and focus on being a wife and mother, but that changed when over 400,000 women served in the armed forces. That number exceeded the total number of men in 1939. Women served in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps, Women's Army Corps (WAAC), the Women's Marine Reserves (WR), Navy Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), a special group of Coast Guard, Semper Parus Always Ready (SPARS), even though they were not officially members of the armed forces, Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) provided critical support for the war effort. Other women worked with the military through service with organizations like the American Red Cross, the United Service Organizations (USO), and the Civil Air Patrol. By the end of the war there were few combat jobs that women weren't in, and some of these jobs didn't even exist before the war. Nurses and WACs served overseas throughout the war. WAVES, SPARs, and WRs were restricted from overseas assignments until near the end of the war when they were sent to the territories of Hawaii and Alaska—then considered overseas duty because they were not states yet.